cphite wrote:The relevant stuff, if your intent is to establish a connection to Trump, happened prior to 2014.

...but, again, why would this be your intent? Getting people to flip on other people isn't about establishing a connection between them; it's about finding enough dirt on one of them so you can get them to hand over the dirt they have on someone else.

If I want you for shoplifting, I'll go after your friend for speeding -- because while I can't prove that you stole those candy-bars, I can prove that he was speeding. Once I've got him for speeding, he'll give me evidence that you stole the candy-bars in exchange for a lighter sentence. It doesn't matter that his speeding has nothing to do with your shoplifting; the point isn't to establish a connection -- it's just to put him in a position where he'll give me what I need to go after you.

It's possible this is just a Hail Mary, but Mueller doesn't seem like the type to throw dynamite into the ocean just to see what turns up. It seems way more likely that Manafort has something he wants -- and he's trying to put Manafort in a position where he'll be forced to give it up.

pogrmman wrote:Also, it’s a blatant lie (assuming it did happen). In the very first paragraph of the indictment, it says “in order to hide Ukraine payments from US authorities, from approximately 2006 through at least 2016...” (emphasis mine). So this was happening during the campaign. Trump says it was “years ago”.

It was years ago before they were part of Trump's team. They also continued these activities from then until at least joining Trump's team.

sardia wrote:On the plus side, heartland is overrated, and exaggerates their actual importance.

America is produces more food than any other nation. The central states is also where a lot of America's natural resources are located.

We're in the traffic-chopper over the XKCD boards where there's been a thread-derailment. A Liquified Godwin spill has evacuated threads in a fourty-post radius of the accident, Lolcats and TVTropes have broken free of their containers. It is believed that the Point has perished.

Fossil fuels create the light of righteousness and that prevents sexual assault. Duh.

More seriously, I honestly can't fathom why he even brought that up. It's not like it was even mentioned or anything. Just out of the blue. And even if you're generous and imply that having lights on at night will help prevent sexual assault, that still doesn't say anything about fossil fuels compared to any other energy source.

Came across this article, it's a pretty good read, and lays out exactly what I'm worried about: What if Muller's investigation concludes the Trump campaign (and Trump) are guilty, and the right just fog it over, and nothing happens. It's not like it's improbable, the Turtle refused to even hold a hearing for supreme court nominee for nearly a year, and nothing happened.

freezeblade wrote:Came across this article, it's a pretty good read, and lays out exactly what I'm worried about: What if Muller's investigation concludes the Trump campaign (and Trump) are guilty, and the right just fog it over, and nothing happens. It's not like it's improbable, the Turtle refused to even hold a hearing for supreme court nominee for nearly a year, and nothing happened.

Twice now in recent memory the majority of voters voted for the Democratic candidate while the Republican candidate won and became president, and the Republicans are fine with it. I don't see this being much different.

Jeff Sessions has apparently suddenly remembered a meeting in which Papadopoulos pitched his Russian connections to Trump/Sessions and others in the campaign. It seems he forgot about this meeting when he made statements under oath to Congress to the effect that he had no knowledge of any connections between the campaign and Russia.

Amusingly, then-candidate Trump had tweeted a picture taken from this meeting, showing Session (far left), Papadopoulos (two seats over from Sessions, dark red tie) and Trump.

freezeblade wrote:Came across this article, it's a pretty good read, and lays out exactly what I'm worried about: What if Muller's investigation concludes the Trump campaign (and Trump) are guilty, and the right just fog it over, and nothing happens. It's not like it's improbable, the Turtle refused to even hold a hearing for supreme court nominee for nearly a year, and nothing happened.

Yeah. Rush Limbaugh already said the word that ends in "up" and starts with "co" in response to a caller's question about Mueller's investigation. Over a hundred million people exposed to - I don't want to even use the term - manufactured lies on Facebook alone. How many of those are keeping up with the information coming out about them? How many will realize they believed and reposted bullshit? I'm drunk and sad and scared.

The gerrymandering case before the supreme court seems like the last hope of rescuing our democracy.

The Los Angeles Times wrote:Sam Clovis, a fiery Iowa talk radio host and former Trump campaign co-chairman who has been caught up in the special counsel’s Russia investigation, has withdrawn his name from consideration to be chief scientific advisor to the secretary of Agriculture.

The nomination was controversial because Clovis, 68, had no scientific or medical degrees or experience, and because court papers released Monday showed he had encouraged George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy advisor to the campaign, to arrange meetings between Trump’s aides and Russian officials.

[...]

Clovis’ confirmation was in doubt even before his role in the Russia probe emerged. CNN dug up posts from his blog, “Impact with Sam Clovis,” from 2011 and 2012 that referred to “race traitor” liberals who he said want to enslave the country. The Senate Agriculture Committee had tentatively scheduled a hearing next week on his nomination.

Clovis currently serves as a senior White House advisor for agriculture, a job that doesn’t require Senate confirmation, and he suggested that he would stay on. He wrote Trump that he would “continue to serve at the pleasure of you and the Secretary of Agriculture.”

[...]

Clovis served in the Air Force, was a business school professor, a candidate for U.S. Senate, a conservative radio host, and a professor of economics at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, before he joined the Trump campaign. But he had no degrees in agriculture, science or medicine.

The 2008 farm bill specifies that the Agriculture Department’s chief scientist should be chosen “from among distinguished scientists with specialized training or significant experience in agricultural research, education, and economics.” The position supervises nearly $3 billion in research and education grants, and helps set research priorities for the department.

It's becoming increasingly clear what sort of qualifications are necessary to become short-listed as a chief scientific advisor in the Trump administration. Ah, well, on to the next non-scientist on the list, then. Unless that one is too easily linked to Russia, too.

Zohar wrote:Twice now in recent memory the majority of voters voted for the Democratic candidate while the Republican candidate won and became president, and the Republicans are fine with it.

freezeblade wrote:...the Turtle refused to even hold a hearing for supreme court nominee for nearly a year, and nothing happened.

And in 2012, more American voted for Democratic Representatives, but the Republicans kept the House majority. That's all three branches of U.S. government where the left has gotten screwed in the past 5 years. If Republicans can hold power without having to appeal to the majority of the populace, they just have to focus on winning their primaries, which means appealling to the 30+% of the country that's still into Trump.

Isaac Hill wrote:And in 2012, more American voted for Democratic Representatives, but the Republicans kept the House majority. That's all three branches of U.S. government where the left has gotten screwed in the past 5 years. If Republicans can hold power without having to appeal to the majority of the populace, they just have to focus on winning their primaries, which means appealling to the 30+% of the country that's still into Trump.

This has always been an issue in other systems. Parliamentary governement systems routinely get majority governments with significantly less than 50% of the popular vote. Even without Gerrymandering you'd have the problem as you concentrate where your supporters are. Realistically as long as theres any regional representative system this will occur. Democratic support being mainly urban and thus more concentrated seems to be more suceptible to this.

Is there actually a current person called Pocahontas, or is this some form of racial epithet? At 4:55am, I suspect this outflow is not what his staff would have allowed, if they were awake.

And then I hear that his account got deleted for a few minutes. Blamed on rogue Twitter employee, but at the ultimate behest of who? Because I can imagine a West Wing staffer arranging it, to allow some clean-up of some of the madder ravings I've been seeing in passing. Despite trying to stay away.

Ever get the feeling that a relativistic baseball might be a good thing? If you can't drain the swamp, boil it! Ugh ...

I mean ... we all knew he felt that way anyway, right? We all knew he was arrogant and insensitive enough to say so as well. Still ... just ... the ... he ...

Someone press the power button for 5 seconds, or whatever it is you have to do? Can we roll-back to the previous version, maybe block this update? Did we keep a backup? Maybe just admit it and get a new MB, CPU, GPU and PSU, some clean RAM and a new HD and OS and just slave the old one as a library.

Soupspoon wrote:Is there actually a current person called Pocahontas, or is this some form of racial epithet?

According to the independent it's a racist slur against Elizabeth Warren, who has (possibly rather distant) Native American heritage. Apparently calling her Pocohontas is a recurring thing for Trump.

It's slightly more complicated than that, although not in a way that makes it that much better. Trump and others (Boston-based conservative talk radio host Howie Carr, who is another particularly hateful person, delights in using the name) don't call her that because they believe she has Native American heritage; they use it ironically because they think she lied about her heritage on applications to "play the minority card" to get ahead.

That said, even if that made the name ok, and even if they were correct in their presumption that she doesn't have any Native American heritage, a lot of the Pocahontas-related attacks on her are just straight-up incredibly racist toward Native Americans (who, again, are in the anti-Warren crowd's conception of the situation a completely unrelated third party who are probably supposed to be glad not to have to claim her). Carr, on his regionally broadcast (at least most of New England, plus online) mid-afternoon radio show, consistently puts on vignettes that are reminiscent of the way Peter Pan (the Disney film) portrayed Indians - not even the noble savage trope like the Pocahontas movie, but as a goofy* stereotype of broken English, teepees, peace pipes, and squaws. And this, at a Trump campaign rally in Bangor.

Former US Republican President George Bush Sr has confirmed he voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, labelling Donald Trump a "blowhard". George W Bush, however, said he simply left his presidential ballot blank.

George W Bush said he worries that "I will be the last Republican president", even though President Trump is a Republican. "This guy doesn't know what it means to be president."

The pair's comments come from a new book, titled The Last Republicans.

Pollsters thought it was close, but it looks like VA's governor is going to the Democrats. We'll know for sure in another hour. Pollsters can't account for undecideds breaking for Democrats late in the race.

An interesting argument someone could make is that fossil fuels can indirectly reduce the rate of sexual assault, because sexual assault is more common among poorer people and the use of fossil fuels will improve the economy. This is not an position I would take considering I doubt either of the premises it is based on are true. It is also not the argument that Perry makes.

LaserGuy wrote:It seems he forgot about this meeting when he made statements under oath to Congress to the effect that he had no knowledge of any connections between the campaign and Russia.

The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously reversed a lower court that had found an Alabama death row inmate ineligible for execution because his declining health had left him unable to remember the murder he had committed.

The justices said that since the Supreme Court has never found that a prisoner is incompetent to be executed because of a failure to remember his crime — as opposed to being able to comprehend the concepts of crime and punishment — the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit had erred in stopping Vernon Madison’s execution.

The Trump Golf Count site is a beautiful monument to monomania, and I love it. Every few months I wander back to it, and I'm always glad I did. Sophie Germain, whoever you are, I salute you and your devotion to this project.

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

Aww, bless. Apparently dumpy's mate Vladimir is really upset that no-one trusts the ex-KGB officer when he says he didn't influence the US election. So he asks his corrupt, misogynistic, half-wit friend to back his case. That's sure to help. We're in a world where a man who you wouldn't trust to say the sun was up is using a man you wouldn't trust in any circumstance (particularly near your wife or daughter) as a character witness.

[As usual, not diplomacy in action....]

Spoiler:

Giant Speck wrote:You're a demon! DEMON!!!!

Oregonaut wrote:CURSE YOU VILLAIN!!

PhoenixEnigma wrote:Jumble is either the best or worst Santa ever, and I can't figure out which. Possibly both.

Putin's press secretary said they didn't discuss meddling. Trump spoke to reporters on AIr Force One and said he had brought it up. He called the directors of the IC political hacks, called Comey a liar. So, undermining US agencies to side with Russia's good word, and yet Russia doesn't side with him. All on Veteran's day.

There have been many bewildering moments but this is really something. It's one of the few crazy things that I can latch onto and remember for more than a week in this shit storm.